How Stress Can Affect Our Health?

Stress affects everyone and we can’t escape it. This happens to people who live in rural areas, so those who have a hectic lifestyle are much more likely to become stressful. This can happen when you are not able to balance between work and leisure at home. Leisure time is limited and often, work overload causes us to spend much of our time and effort. Stress could happen due to anxiety, guilt, fear, anger and other negative feelings. When stress happens too long, our body will be affected. Stress may first degrade our immune system. It will activate our adrenal glands and cortisol, a type of hormone will be released. It is useful for briefly relieving our body and mind from the effects of stress, but after a long-term exposure, our health will be affected.

After a long-period of time, stress will cause depression, ulcer, diabetes, hypertension, insomnia, heartburn and others. Stress also affects our digestion and this will cause problems with our ability to assimilate nutrients. People who are distressed can’t follow their hunger signal. Simple deep breathing exercises and balanced nutritious diet could often significantly improve our situations. Breakfast could have a contribution in ensuring that we are more resistant to stress. If our breakfast is good enough, we should be able to adequately maintain our overall sugar level. It is not advisable to skip breakfast, because the lack of energy will make it more difficult for us to cope with stress symptoms. There are nutrients that can make it easier for us to deal with stress.

Vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E and selenium should help our body to fight unwanted effects of stress. Antioxidant that we get from food is also essential. So we should eat more leafy vegetables, fresh fruits, fish, figs, pulses, curd and others. Vitamin C is also essential, because our brain has the highest density of vitamin C compared to other parts of our body. Despite being easily found in our diet, vitamin C is actually a very strong antioxidant and it is recommended to have about 1000mg of citamin C each day. Vitamin B12 is also essential to reduce stress-induced fatigue. Common sources of vitamin B12 include lean meat, eggs, fish and milk. We also need to have enough vitamin B6 so we can get stronger immune system.

Common sources of vitamin B6 are potatoes and banana. Fruits could also help us to reduce stress. Vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage should be quite rich in bio-flavonoids. These substances should help us in neutralizing free radicals that can be generated during a stressful location. You should be able to improve the situation using the deep breathing technique. We are actually using the partial capacity of our lungs in daily situations. If we are able to breathe properly, we should be able to reduce the overall stress level. By practicing deep breathing technique, our body will be full of energy and we will be able to perform much more easily.